Epilogue #3
"No, you won't." He held my gaze across the room. "Because I haven't told you to."
Mierda. He tapped the phone.
The toy pulled back inside me and drove forward in a slow, deep stroke that ground the curved head across my prostate for the full length of the thrust. I yelled.
Not a moan, not a gasp, a yell that came from somewhere below my lungs.
The thrust reversed and came again, and the rotation was still going, the vibration still pulsing, and the three of them together took me apart.
My back bowed off the mattress, and sounds came out of me that I'd stopped trying to control because controlling anything while Jasper ran four simultaneous programs inside my body was a joke, and I was the punchline.
"Breathe," he said. His voice had gone rough. "Diego. Breathe."
I sucked in air, and the exhale turned into a moan that kept going because the toy thrust again, and the rotation caught the angle that turned my vision to static.
My cock pulsed against my stomach, untouched, leaking in a steady stream that pooled in the dip of my abs.
My thighs trembled so hard that the sheets vibrated.
Jasper shifted in his chair. He pressed the heel of his palm against himself through his jeans, once, hard, and then gripped the armrest again like he was punishing himself for it. A flush had crept up the side of his neck. Ahí estás. There you are. That's the crack I'd been waiting for.
"Touch yourself now," he said. "Slow."
I let go of the headboard and wrapped my hand around my cock. The first stroke pulled a sound out of me that cracked in the middle, and I was so slick that my grip slid and I had to tighten it. Everything below my waist was shaking.
"Slower," he said.
"I can't. Jasper. No puedo."
"You can." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, phone in one hand. His breathing had gone shallow and fast. "Match the thrust pattern. Let it build."
I tried. Every forward stroke of the toy, I pulled up.
Every retreat, I slid back down. The rhythm locked into place and the pressure built in a hot, tightening circuit from the toy to my cock to the base of my spine.
My jaw hung open. I'd stopped forming words in any language.
The only sounds in the room were my breathing and the wet slide of my hand, and Jasper's voice, and his voice was the only thing keeping me on this side of sane.
"Faster," he said, and tapped the phone. The thrust speed increased. The rotation shifted to a tighter, shorter pattern. I matched the new pace, and the moan I made broke apart halfway through into something I didn't recognize.
"Por favor," I pleaded. "Jasper, por favor, déjame correrme, please, please let me come."
His breath caught. He pressed his palm against himself again, harder, and I could see his thigh muscles locked tight, his whole body rigid in the chair.
I wanted him to cross the room. I wanted his hands on me. But he stayed where he was because Jasper's self-control was a force of nature, and I loved him, and I was going to kill him.
"One more mode," he said. "The last one. Everything at once."
"Turn it on."
"When I do, you come. Say it for me."
"When you turn it on, I come. Jasper. Por favor. Turn it on."
He tapped the phone.
The toy surged. Vibration, rotation, and thrust hit peak simultaneously, and the orgasm detonated.
I stroked once, twice, and came so hard I thought I might die, spilling hot over my fist and my stomach in long pulses while the toy kept going inside me, kept thrusting and rotating, dragging it out, pulling another wave through me before the first had ended.
My hips bucked off the mattress. I came until my hand cramped and my abs burned, wave after wave, and Jasper killed it from the app, one tap, and everything stopped at once.
The room went quiet. The fan turned overhead. My breathing came ragged and too fast, and my hand stayed wrapped around my cock, too spent to move it.
His chair creaked. He crossed the room, and the mattress dipped as he sat on the edge.
He eased the toy out of me with enough care that I almost laughed, and I hissed at the drag of the ridges.
He set it on the nightstand. His hands shook.
He pressed one to the inside of my thigh, right where the muscle still jumped and twitched, and held it there until the tremor eased.
That was Jasper. Six feet of distance and total control for twenty minutes, and then his hand on my skin the second it was over, shaking just enough to tell me the distance had cost him.
Then he brushed the hair off my forehead. He traced my temple with his thumb, and his hand trembled against my skin. He pulled back before I could comment, but I'd already clocked it.
"Research," I said, still trying to breathe.
"Told you." He let out a breath that sounded like he'd been holding it the whole time. "Extensive."
He came back with a warm cloth and cleaned me up without being asked. Then he stripped off his shirt and jeans and climbed into bed beside me in his boxers. I turned into him and buried my face against his neck. He smelled like cigarettes and soap and the warmth that was just him.
"Happy anniversary," he said against my hair.
"Two weeks late."
"Worth the wait?"
I bit his collarbone gently. "Worth the wait."
We lay tangled together, his arm heavy across my waist, my leg thrown over his. The fan turned overhead. I pressed my thumb against his pulse and counted it slowing.
"Mila got in trouble at school again," I said.
Jasper tensed. "What kind of trouble?"
"Relax. Not that kind." I traced the scar on his shoulder, the one from Kiev. "She took your katana to school."
"She what?"
"For show and tell. The assignment was to bring something that represented your family history, and she brought the sword you used to fight Achilles."
"She told them that?"
"She told them her father used it to slay Achilles. The teacher laughed because she thought Mila meant the Greek hero." I pressed my grin against his chest. "And then Mila offered to demonstrate, and they called me to come pick her up."
Jasper was quiet for a long moment. "She didn't actually swing it at anyone."
"She assumed a fighting stance. In the middle of the classroom. Apparently her form was perfect."
Another silence. "I need to lock the weapons cabinet."
"She's your daughter. Locks are suggestions."
Jasper exhaled through his nose, one long breath. "Was anyone hurt?"
"No one was hurt. Senora Vega nearly had a heart attack. The principal wants a meeting."
"I'll handle it."
"You'll handle it? You, the man who taught her the fighting stance?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. We'll both handle it."
"Good. Also, it's her turn for class snack day on Friday."
"What does that involve?"
"Bringing snacks. For the class."
"I know what snack day means. What kind of snacks?"
"Mamá already volunteered. She's making churros."
"That's going to make every other parent's contribution look bad."
"That's the point. Mamá doesn't believe in sharing the spotlight."
He almost smiled. I caught it this time, the way his whole face softened for half a second before he pulled it back. He pressed his lips to my forehead.
He was quiet, and when he spoke again, the joke had left him. "I'm going to a parent-teacher meeting," he said. "About a show-and-tell incident. With snack day on Friday."
He said it like he was testing the words for structural integrity, like he'd built something out of materials he'd never been trained to use and kept waiting for the load-bearing wall to give.
"We're terrible parents."
"The worst." I pulled the blanket over both of us. "But her form was perfect. So we're doing something right."
The quiet settled over us. The fan clicked softly. Outside, the valley stretched dark and still, the mountains black against a sky full of stars. Somewhere down the hall, Mila slept in a room she'd decorated herself, walls covered in her drawings, a lock on the door she never used.
Jasper's breathing slowed against my neck. I held onto him. On a rooftop in Casablanca, I'd told him I was going to build this, and he'd looked at me like I was out of my mind.
My kid's charcoal pencils were scattered across the kitchen counter. The man I'd promised it to was falling asleep against my chest.
Turned out I was right.